2 million Obamacare enrollees asked for more info

About 2 million people enrolled in Obamacare exchanges submitted information that doesn’t match up with federal records, potentially jeopardizing the coverage and federal subsidies for some of them, the Obama administration said Wednesday afternoon.

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The officials emphasized that discrepancies in people’s application data are unlikely to affect their coverage or the level of subsidies they received. Rather, they’ll have to submit additional documentation to ensure that they’re getting the correct level of tax credits.

Those receiving too great a subsidy could be asked to repay a portion, however, and in some cases, if enrollees don’t provide additional data, their coverage could be rescinded.

“The Marketplace checked to see that consumers are who they said they were, matching Social Security numbers, income and tribal status, among a host of other data points — all to ensure that folks are eligible for coverage and, in many cases, entitled to financial assistance to help them afford their plan … But, while most information the applicant provided lined up, sometimes a name or data point didn’t match up right away with existing records,” CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille wrote in a blog post.

“For example, a consumer might have recently changed jobs, but the latest IRS tax return data and other data available to the Marketplace didn’t reflect that change in income,” Bataille continued. “In such cases, the law requires us to double and triple check this data in another way.”

The 2 million people asked to provide additional information represent about one in four of the 8 million people who signed up for coverage through ACA exchanges during the 2014 enrollment season. Bataille said those in the process of submitting additional information retain their health coverage in the interim.

The administration also posted an FAQ on HealthCare.gov today for people who are asked to submit more information to their exchanges.

About half of the application discrepancies involved people’s incomes, which often didn’t match their most recent IRS data, according to those news reports. The other half involved immigration or residency status, an issue administration officials attributed to misspelled names or expired documents.